In the Harry Potter movies and books, the Weasleys have many curious mannerisms. After the Catholics, they drop their babies with astonishing regularity, best conveyed by a Monty Python skit. They are also Gingers, which South Park has taught us are all evil.

But they aren’t all bad. Amongst their bewitched household possessions is an amazing clock. Each horological hand contains the portrait of a young Weasley. The hands do not tell time; instead, they point to the location of each broodling, bratling and errant husband. For the worrying mother, certainly a better investment than yet another time piece.

The Weasley’s clock ran on magic, but a hacker has made his own version, using an Ardurino processor, Twitter and geo-location to emulate the same sorcerable functionality. Fun.

Tracking four family members, here’s how the Magic Clock works: a script fetches four Twitter feeds every couple of minutes, which then parses out the first words and searches for a matching status. If no match is found, it sets the status on the clock to ‘Read me'; otherwise, it sets the hand to either school, church, home or mortal peril (after the Weasley’s clock).

Of course, the Magic Clock depends upon each Twitter user it is following typing in a particular syntax with their Tweets which the clock can pick up on, but otherwise: what an amazing hack. All you need to do is supply the old clock case, the pictures and the four family members!